Loughborough

An extract from the book Scottish Highlands, Caribbean Islands, and more

Loughborough is a town in the county of Leicestershire most famously associated with sport in particular swimming and athletics. Not many tourists come to the town, but I have always found the place to be of great interest. The main reasons are The Charnwood Museum almost opposite the library, the carillion in the park next door, and the market.

The Charnwood Museum is a free attraction and gives a lovely overview of the borough of Charnwood, which covers roughly 100 square miles and was created by local government restructuring in 1974. In May 1982 a curator of the museum was told about a shop that had been boarded-up for roughly 20 years in the village of Belton a few miles from Loughborough. Some of what the curator found in that shop – a true time capsule of products – are now on display in one corner of the museum. The last owner of the shop had been a J Gilbert, Baker & Grocer, Tea Dealer & Provision Merchant, and a Dealer in Patent Medicines. Some of the products on display included Thompson’s Dandelion Coffee, Colman’s Mustard, Hudson’s Dry Soap, Colman’s Starch, and Lambert & Butler’s Waverley Mixture. I wondered whether the Dandelion Coffee would have counted as a patent medicine?